Hyndman on Marx

Published:Zvezda, No. 31, November 26, 1911.

      Signed:Vl. Ilyin.

      Published according to theZvezdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 17,

      pages306-312.Translated:Dora CoxTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thevoluminous memoirs of one of the founders and leaders
of the British Social-Democratic Party, Henry Mayers Hyndman, have recently
been published. The book of nearly five hundred pages is entitledThe
Record of an Adventurous

			      Life[1]and represents the reminiscences, written in lively fashion, of the
author’s political activity and of the “celebrities” he knew. Hyndman’s
book provides a great deal of interesting material for the characterisation
of British socialism and for an appraisal of certain important problems
affecting the entire international working-class movement.

Wetherefore think it timely to devote a few articles to Hyndman’s
book, particularly in view of the fact that the Flight-wing CadetRusskiye Vedomostipublished (on October 14) an article by the
liberal Dioneo, which provides an admirable example of how the liberals
throw light, or rather darkness, on these problems.

Letus start with Hyndman’s reminiscences of Marx. Hyndman made his
acquaintance only in 1880, when ho apparently knew very little about Marx’s
teachings and about socialism in general. It is characteristic of British
relationships that, born in 1842, Hyndman, until the moment we are speaking
of, was a “democrat” of an indefinite hue who had contacts and sympathies
with the Conservative Party (Tories). Hyndman turned to socialism after
readingCapital(in the French translation) during one of his
numerous voyages to America between 1874 and 1880.

Accompaniedby Karl Hirsch, Hyndman, on his way to visit Marx, mentally
compared him to—Mazzini!

Thelevel at which Hyndman makes this comparison can be judged from the
fact that he describes Mazzini’s influence on those around him as
“personal and individually ethical”, and considered Marx’s influence to
be “almost wholly intellectual and scientific”. Hyndman went to Marx as
to a “supreme analytical genius” and was eager to learn from him; what
attracted him in Mazzini was his character and his “elevation of thought
and conduct”. But that Marx “was far the more powerful mind cannot be
disputed”. Nor can it be disputed that Hyndman very poorly understood in
1880 (and does not quite understand even now—but of that later) the
difference between a bourgeois democrat and a socialist.

“Thefirst impression of Marx as I saw him,” writes
   Hyndman, “was that of a powerful, shaggy, untamed old man, ready; not
   to say eager, to enter into conflict, and rather suspicious himself of
   immediate attack. Yet his greeting to us was cordial and his first
   remarks to me, after I had told him what a great pleasure and honour I
   felt it to be to shake hands with the author ofCapital, were
   agreeable enough; for he told me that he had read my articles on

				India[2]with pleasure and had commented on them favourably in his newspaper
   correspondence.“Whenspeaking with fierce indignation of the policy
   of the Liberal Party, especially in regard to Ireland, the old warrior’s
   small deep-sunk eyes lighted up, his heavy brows wrinkled, the broad,
   strong nose and face were obviously moved by passion, and he poured out
   a stream of vigorous denunciation, which displayed alike the heat of his
   temperament and the marvellous command he possessed over our
   language. The contrast between his manner and utterance when thus deeply
   stirred by anger and his attitude when giving his views on the economic
   events of the period was very marked. He turned from the role of prophet
   and vehement denunciator to that of the calm philosopher without any
   apparent effort, and I felt from the first that on this latter ground
   many a long year might pass before I ceased to be a student in the
   presence of a master.“Ihad been surprised in readingCapital, and still more
   when perusing his smaller works, such as is pronouncement on the Commune
   of Paris, and hisEighteenth Brumaire, how he combined the
   ablest and coolest examination of economic causes and social effects
   with the most bitter hatred of classes and even of individual men such
   as Napoleon III or M. Thiers, who, according to his own theories, were
   little more than flies upon the wheels of the great Juggernaut car of
   capitalist development. Marx, or course, was a Jew, and to me it seemed
   that he combined in his own person and nature, with his commanding
   forehead and great overhanging brow, his fierce glittering eyes, broad
   sensitive nose and mobile mouth, all surrounded by a setting of
   untrimmed hair and beard, the righteous fury of the great seers of his
   race, with the cold analytical powers of Spinoza and the Jewish
   doctors. It was an extraordinary combination of qualities, the like of
   which I have known in no other man.“AsI went out with Hirsch, deeply impressed by the great
   personality we had left, Hirsch asked me what I thought of
   Marx. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I think he is the Aristotle of the nineteenth
   century.’ And yet as I said it, I knew that this did not cover the
   ground. For one thing it was quite impossible to think of Marx as acting
   the courtier to Alexander (of Macedonia) while carrying on the profound
   studies which have so deeply influenced later generations, and besides
   he never so wholly segregated himself from immediate human
   interests—notwithstanding much that has been said to the contrary—as
   to be able to consider facts and their surroundings in the cold hard
   light of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. There can be no doubt
   what ever that his hatred of the system of exploitation and wage slavery
   by which he was surrounded was not only intellectual and philosophic but
   bitterly personal.“Iremember saying to him once that as I grew older, I thought I
   became more tolerant. ‘Do you,’ he said, ‘doyou?’ It was quite
   certain he didn’t. It has been, I think, Marx’s deep animosity to the
   existing order of things and his scathing criticism of his opponents
   which has prevented many of the educated well-to-do class from
   appreciating his masterly life-work at its full value and has rendered
   third-rate sciolists and logomachers like Böhm-Bawerk, such heroes
   in their eyes, merely because they have misrepresented and attempted to
   ‘refute’ him. Accustomed as we are nowadays, especially in England, to
   fence always with big soft buttons on the point of our rapiers, Marx’s
   terrible onslaughts with naked steel upon his adversaries appeared so
   improper that it was impossible for our gentle manly sham fighters and
   mental gymnasium men to believe that this unsparing controversialist and
   furious assailant of capital and capitalists was really the deepest
   thinker of modern times.”

“Thefirst impression of Marx as I saw him,” writes
   Hyndman, “was that of a powerful, shaggy, untamed old man, ready; not
   to say eager, to enter into conflict, and rather suspicious himself of
   immediate attack. Yet his greeting to us was cordial and his first
   remarks to me, after I had told him what a great pleasure and honour I
   felt it to be to shake hands with the author ofCapital, were
   agreeable enough; for he told me that he had read my articles on

				India[2]with pleasure and had commented on them favourably in his newspaper
   correspondence.

“Whenspeaking with fierce indignation of the policy
   of the Liberal Party, especially in regard to Ireland, the old warrior’s
   small deep-sunk eyes lighted up, his heavy brows wrinkled, the broad,
   strong nose and face were obviously moved by passion, and he poured out
   a stream of vigorous denunciation, which displayed alike the heat of his
   temperament and the marvellous command he possessed over our
   language. The contrast between his manner and utterance when thus deeply
   stirred by anger and his attitude when giving his views on the economic
   events of the period was very marked. He turned from the role of prophet
   and vehement denunciator to that of the calm philosopher without any
   apparent effort, and I felt from the first that on this latter ground
   many a long year might pass before I ceased to be a student in the
   presence of a master.

“Ihad been surprised in readingCapital, and still more
   when perusing his smaller works, such as is pronouncement on the Commune
   of Paris, and hisEighteenth Brumaire, how he combined the
   ablest and coolest examination of economic causes and social effects
   with the most bitter hatred of classes and even of individual men such
   as Napoleon III or M. Thiers, who, according to his own theories, were
   little more than flies upon the wheels of the great Juggernaut car of
   capitalist development. Marx, or course, was a Jew, and to me it seemed
   that he combined in his own person and nature, with his commanding
   forehead and great overhanging brow, his fierce glittering eyes, broad
   sensitive nose and mobile mouth, all surrounded by a setting of
   untrimmed hair and beard, the righteous fury of the great seers of his
   race, with the cold analytical powers of Spinoza and the Jewish
   doctors. It was an extraordinary combination of qualities, the like of
   which I have known in no other man.

“AsI went out with Hirsch, deeply impressed by the great
   personality we had left, Hirsch asked me what I thought of
   Marx. ‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I think he is the Aristotle of the nineteenth
   century.’ And yet as I said it, I knew that this did not cover the
   ground. For one thing it was quite impossible to think of Marx as acting
   the courtier to Alexander (of Macedonia) while carrying on the profound
   studies which have so deeply influenced later generations, and besides
   he never so wholly segregated himself from immediate human
   interests—notwithstanding much that has been said to the contrary—as
   to be able to consider facts and their surroundings in the cold hard
   light of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. There can be no doubt
   what ever that his hatred of the system of exploitation and wage slavery
   by which he was surrounded was not only intellectual and philosophic but
   bitterly personal.

“Iremember saying to him once that as I grew older, I thought I
   became more tolerant. ‘Do you,’ he said, ‘doyou?’ It was quite
   certain he didn’t. It has been, I think, Marx’s deep animosity to the
   existing order of things and his scathing criticism of his opponents
   which has prevented many of the educated well-to-do class from
   appreciating his masterly life-work at its full value and has rendered
   third-rate sciolists and logomachers like Böhm-Bawerk, such heroes
   in their eyes, merely because they have misrepresented and attempted to
   ‘refute’ him. Accustomed as we are nowadays, especially in England, to
   fence always with big soft buttons on the point of our rapiers, Marx’s
   terrible onslaughts with naked steel upon his adversaries appeared so
   improper that it was impossible for our gentle manly sham fighters and
   mental gymnasium men to believe that this unsparing controversialist and
   furious assailant of capital and capitalists was really the deepest
   thinker of modern times.”

In1880 Marx was practically unknown to the British public. His health
was then failing. His strenuous exertions (sixteen hours a day and more of
mental labour!) had sapped his constitution. He was now forbidden by his
doctors to do any work in the evenings and, Hyndman relates, “at theclose of 1880 and the beginning of 1881, I had the advantage of very
frequent conversations with the Doctor”.

“Ourmethod of talking was peculiar. Marx had a habit when at all
   interested in the discussion of walking actively up and down the room as
   if he were pacing the deck of a schooner for exercise. I had acquired on
   my long voyages (to America, Australia, etc.) the same tendency of
   pacing to and fro when my mind was much occupied. Consequently, master
   and student could have been seen walking u an down on opposite sides of
   the table for two or three hours in succession, engaged in discussing
   the affairs of the past and the present.”

“Ourmethod of talking was peculiar. Marx had a habit when at all
   interested in the discussion of walking actively up and down the room as
   if he were pacing the deck of a schooner for exercise. I had acquired on
   my long voyages (to America, Australia, etc.) the same tendency of
   pacing to and fro when my mind was much occupied. Consequently, master
   and student could have been seen walking u an down on opposite sides of
   the table for two or three hours in succession, engaged in discussing
   the affairs of the past and the present.”

Hyndmandoes not give anything like a detailed account of the position
Marx tookon even a single one of the questionshe discussed with
him. From what is quoted above it can be seen that Hyndman concentrated
mostly, almost exclusively, indeed, on theanecdotalside; this is
in line with the rest of his book. Hyndman’s autobiography is the life
story of a British bourgeois philistine who, being the pick of his class,
finally makes his way to socialism, but never completely throws off
bourgeois traditions, bourgeois views and prejudices.

Whilerepeating the philistine reproaches against Marx and Engels that
they were “autocrats” in “what was sup posed to be a democratic”
International, that they did not understand practical affairs, did not know
people, etc., Hyndman never makes an attempt to test a single one of these
reproaches on the basis of an exact, concrete analysis of the circumstances
at the periods concerned.

Theresult is anecdote and not Marxist historical analysis. Marx and
Engels fought against the unification of German Social-Democracy (with the

Lassalleans[3]), whereas this unity was necessary! That is all that
Hyndman says. He does not say a word about Marx and Engels having been a
thousand times right in principle in their opposition to Lassalle and the
Lassalleans. He does not even raise the question. He does not even ask
himself whether “democracy” (organisational) in the period of the
International was not a screen for bourgeois sects engaged in disrupting
the work of building up proletarian Social-Democracy.

Asa result, the story of Hyndman’s rupture with Marx is told in such a
way that we get absolutely nothing butgossip (in the spirit of the Dioneos). Engels, you see, was “exacting,
suspicious, jealous”; Marx’s wife is alleged to have told Hyndman’s wife
that Engels was Marx’s “evil genius” (!); Engels, whom Hyndman never even
met (despite what Mr. Dioneo has written inRusskiye Vedomosti),
was “not disinclined to give full weight to the exchange value of his
ready cash in his relations with those whom he helped” (with money; Engels
was very rich, Marx very poor). Engels is said to have caused a quarrel
between Marx and Hyndman, out of fear that Hyndman, a wealthy man at that
time, would take Engels’s place as Marx’s rich friend!

Ofcourse, the liberals derive pleasure from rehashing such
inexpressible vulgarities. And of course if is not at all in the interests
of the liberal hacks at least to acquaint themselves with the letters (of
Marx and

Engels[4]) to Sorge, referred to by Hyndman himself, andto try and
understandthe point at issue. They do not take the trouble to do
that!  And yet a reference to these letters and a comparison between them
and Hyndman’s “memoirs” would immediately settle the matter.

In1881 Hyndman published a pamphlet entitledEngland for Allin which he adopts socialism but remains a very, very confused bourgeois
democrat. The pamphlet was writ ten for the Democratic Federation (not
socialist) which had then been founded and to which a large number of
anti-socialist elements belonged. Hyndman paraphrases and copies fromCapitalin two chapters of this pamphlet,but does not mention
Marx; however, in the preface he speaks vaguely of a certain “great
thinker” and “original writer” to whom he is greatly indebted,
etc. Hyndman tells us that it was over this that Engels caused a
“breach” between him and Marx, and at the same time quotes a letter Marx
had written to him (dated December 8, 1880), in which Marx says that,
according to Hyndman, he, Hyndman, “does not share the views of my
[Marx’s] party for England”.

Itis clear what the difference was—a difference not understood,
noticed, or appreciated by Hyndman. It was that Hyndman at that time (as
Marx plainly wrote to Sorge on December 15, 1881) was a “well-meaning,
petty-bourgeois writer”, “half-bourgeois, half-proletarian”. Obviously
if a man who makes the acquaintance of Marx, becomesintimate with him, calls himself a student of his, later forms a
“democratic” federation and writes a pamphlet for it in which he
misrepresents Marxism and does not mention Marx, the latter could not let
it pass without making a “furious” protest. Evidently the protest was
made, for Marx in the same letter to Sorge quotes extracts from letters of
apology in which Hyndman excuses himself on the ground that “the English
don’t like to be taught by foreigners” and that “my [Marx’s] name was so
much detested” (!), etc. (Hyndman himself states that he destroyed nearly
all of Marx’s letters to him, so that the discovery of the truth from this
side is not to be expected.)

Fineapologies, are they not! Well, at a time when the question of the
then existing differences between Hyndman and Marx has been cleared up
quite definitely, and when even the whole of Hyndman’s present book shows
that there is much of the philistine and bourgeois in his views (for
example, the arguments with which Hyndman defends capital punishment for
criminals!), what is offered as the explanation of his rupture with Marx is
the “intrigues” of Engels, who for forty years, followed a common line of
principle with Marx. Even if all the rest of Hyndman’s book were a barrel
of honey, this one spoonful of tar would be enough to spoil it!

Thedifferences between Marx and Hyndman at that time are most
characteristically revealed by what Hyndman tells us about Marx’s opinion
of Henry George. Marx’s appraisal of Henry George is known from his letter
to Sorge dated June 20, 1881. Talking with Marx, Hyndman defended Henry
George using the following argument: “George will teach more by
inculcating error than other men can impart by complete exposition of the
truth”.

“Marx,”writes Hyndman, “would not hear of this as a sound
contention. The promulgation of error could never be of any good to the
people, that was his view. ‘To leave error unrefuted is to encourage
intellectual immorality. For ten who go farther, a hundred may very easily
stop with George, and the danger of this is too great to run!’”
That was what Marx said!

YetHyndman tells us that, on the one hand. he still holds to his
previous opinion of Henry George, and that,on the other hand, George was a boy with a bright farthing dip fooling
around within the radius of a man using an electric searchlight.

Anexcellent comparison, only ... only it was risky for Hyndman to make
this excellent comparison side by side with his miserable gossip about
Engels.

[1]TheRecord of an Adventurous Life, by Henry Mayers Hyndman,
London (Macmillan & Co.), 1911.  —Lenin

[2]Untilhe recently turned to jingoism, Hyndman was a determined enemy of
   British imperialism, and from 1878 carried on a noble campaign of
   exposure against the shameful acts of violence, outrage, plunder, and
   indignity (including the flogging of political “criminals”) for which
   Britishers of all parties in India, including the “educated” and
   “radical” author, John Morley, have long made themselves famous.
   —Lenin

[3]Lassalleans—supporters of the German petty-bourgeois
socialist Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), members of the General
Association of German Workers founded in 1863 at the Congress of Workers’
Organisations, held in Leipzig, to counterbalance the bourgeois
progressists who were endeavouring to gain influence over the working
class. The first Chairman of the Association was Lassalle, who formulated
its programme and tactics. The Association’spolitical programme was the struggle for universal suffrage, and its
economic programme, the struggle for the workers’ production associations,
subsidised by the state. In their practical activities, Lassalle and his
followers adapted themselves to the hegemony of Prussia and supported the
Great-Power policy of Bismarck. “Objectively”, wrote Engels to Marx on
January 27, 1865, “this was a base action and a betrayal of the whole
working-class movement to the Prussians”. Marx and Engels frequently and
sharply criticised the theory, tactics, and organisational principles of
the Lassalleans as an opportunist trend in the German working-class
movement.

[4]Thisrefers to the letters, quoted below by Lenin, of Marx to Sorge of
June 20 and December 15, 1881.